January 20, 2009

Michelle Obama Wears Isabel Toledo

Photo: Tannen Maury/AP

After weeks of speculation, it’s official. America’s newly minted First Lady Michelle Obama stepped out on Inauguration Day 2009 wearing a pale yellow dress and coat ensemble by designer Isabel Toledo. Made of Swiss wool lace, the outfit is evocative of a look associated with another Mrs. O—Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

The blog Mrs. O, devoted to the fashion sass of the new first lady, points out that the color “Mimosa,” the shade of a champagne and orange juice cocktail, was named by Pantone as the color of 2009 because it “embodies hopefulness and reassurance in a climate of change.”

Toledo said in an interview with The New York Times’ The Caucus blog that she had wanted to dress Michelle Obama in “a very optimistic color, that had sunshine.”

The designer didn’t know until this morning whether Mrs. Obama would choose her ensemble. The first lady is also a fan of Ikram, a boutique in Chicago that carries clothes by designers Maria Cornejo and Narciso Rodriguez; Rodriguez designed the red and black dress that Mrs. Obama wore on election night.

But who is Isabel Toledo?

Based in New York, Toledo was born in Cuba in 1961 and later moved to New Jersey to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. For years, she worked under her own label, which earned a name for itself as a bastion of clean lines and classic American style.

In 2007, Toledo was tapped by all-American fashion house Anne Klein to serve as the label’s creative director. Toledo left that post a few months later. Nonetheless, fashion critics have named her as part of the lineage of “Great American Designer.” Among Toledo’s sartorial ancestors is Claire McCardell, a designer who fellow classic designer Norman Norell said could “take $5 worth of common calico and turn it into something a stylish woman would wear.”

May the Obamas continue to embrace simple American ingenuity through this new presidency.

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